News Articles

We wrote about The Barn Light in this column back in August and its plans to open a new bar and coffee shop in September. The classy new watering hole finally opened the evening of Thanksgiving Day at 924 Willamette, in the newly rebuilt Broadway Commerce Center. Owners are Thomas Pettus-Czar and Dustin Kinsey, who met and worked together at a popular bar and coffee shop in Lawrence, Kan. “We look forward to participating in the rebirth of a thriving, vibrant center of commerce and community in downtown Eugene,” says Kinsey.

• EmX funding still has more public process to go through and the deadline for written testimony is Dec. 2 for pending action by the Central Lane Metropolitan Planning Organization. The MPO will be looking at whether to earmark Oregon Lottery funds to help finance EmX expansion. Send comments to mpo@lcog.org

Eco-saboteur Daniel McGowan, the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary film If a Tree Falls, will be released from the secretive prison where he has been held for the past several years on Dec. 11. The Civil Liberties Defense Center, which has worked to expose and oppose the Communications Management Units where McGowan was held, is sponsoring a fundraising event at Cozmic Friday, Nov. 23, support to help McGowan after he is released.

The news that clearcutting would be suspended on 914 acres of the Elliott State Forest came to logging opponents through a September memo that was posted on the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) website, Josh Laughlin of Cascadia Wildlands says. He says this was welcome news for an endangered sea bird that nests in Oregon’s coastal old-growth forests. Cascadia Wildlands and other groups filed a suit in federal court in July to try protect the threatened marbled murrelet and its habitat, and that suit has led to the temporary cease in clearcutting.

Finding a tree to hug is an easy task in arboreal Eugene, and Friends of Trees aims to make it even easier by adding to the urban forest. The group’s next planting opportunity to is Dec. 1 at Washington Park. Volunteers will break into teams and plant street and yard trees in several south Eugene neighborhoods. The event begins at 9 am.

Two Occupy Eugene protesters got cold and in trouble for calling attention to homeless people who are cold and in trouble. The activists received citations for criminal trespass in the second degree around 1:30 am Monday after scaling the chain-link fence that blocks off Eugene’s City Hall. The Occupiers were protesting the city’s lack of action in providing homeless people with a safe place to sleep during the winter.

In 1990 President George H.W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.” The irony is that this falls around the same time as Columbus Day, marking the “discovery of America” and beginning of colonization.

Protesters in Texas have put up treesits and locked themselves to machinery to stop the Keystone XL pipeline; thousands of activists gathered around the White House Nov. 18 to call on President Obama to reject the controversial tar sands conduit; and here in Eugene, as part of a week of solidarity actions, local activists faced high winds and rain to voice their concerns about tar sands oil.

A downpour of rain and a lack of media attention did nothing to stop a group of protesters from picketing at 7th and Pearl in downtown Eugene on Saturday, Nov. 16. Members of the Tea Party-related Lane County 9-12 Project and other conservative groups say it’s the lack of local media attention that has led them to protest local media.

The activists decked out in rain jackets and umbrellas gathered to express their dissatisfaction with the media’s coverage of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

MECCA, the Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts, is expanding its store hours at 449 Willamette St., next to the Amtrak station. MECCA will now be open afternoons and early evenings, and will be celebrating its new hours with a public ceremony at 11 am Saturday, Dec. 1. Officiating will be MECCA Executive Director Jija Adrade and Slug Queen Sadie Slimy Stitches. The nonprofit store acts as a clearing house for scraps and discards that can be used creatively and sold at low prices to artists, teachers and others.

• A beach clean-up day in the Florence area is planned for 10:30 am Sunday, Nov. 25, by the Surfrider Foundation. See oregon.surfrider.org/events or email jonandjaine@bmi.net or call (800) 743-SURF.

• A petition From Cascadia Wildlands at wkly.ws/1e0 urges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to maintain federal protections for wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Wolves, even those with collars, are being hunted and killed in Northwestern states. See more information at the Forest Web of Cottage Grove Facebook page.

If your soul is feeling like a frozen sea within you, Franz Kafka would recommend you read a book to serve as an axe for the ice — and Eugene-based nonprofit Books to the People wants to be there with a carefully selected collection of axes for you to choose from at no cost to you.

Heidy Hollister, a former Lane County Animal Services veterinary technician who then went on to work for Greenhill Humane Society after it took over the LCAS shelter, has filed a $700,000 suit against Greenhill that says she was subject to “unwarranted criticism and reprimands” and her contract terminated after she complained “that many of the animals were injured, sick and diseased and defendant [Greenhill] did not provide them with adequate or any medication or hygienic care to relieve their pain and suffering.”

In early September, DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) assessed a penalty of $1,500 against SFPP, L.P. for Clean Water Act violations at its bulk petroleum facility at 1765 Prairie Rd. (just south of Lane Forest Products and north of Maxwell Road). The violations consisted of multiple oil and grease limit violations, and multiple failure-to-monitor violations. The Prairie Road facility is the southern terminus of a 114-mile pipeline from Portland, and has a storage capacity in excess of 700,000 barrels.

Holiday Market, an extension of Saturday Market that includes fine arts and crafts from around the region, plus food and music, kicks off from 10 am to 6 pm Saturday, Nov. 17, at the Fairgrounds. The market runs weekends through Dec. 24. See holidaymarket.org

Dutch Bros. Coffee is planning to open its first Cottage Grove location at 1534 N. Gateway Blvd. at a date in November to be announced. The coffee chain gives away free drinks when it opens new stores, always leading to long lines.

• “The PERS Picture in Oregon and Springfield” will be the topic at Springfield City Club at 11:45 am Thursday, Nov. 15, at Willamalane Center, 250 South 32nd St., Springfield. Panelists will include John Thomas, Brett Yancey and Bob Duey.

$3 if you wear all black and $6 if you don’t will get you admission to the benefit show for grand jury resistors at the Lorax on Alder Street on Nov. 9. Grand juries are used in federal court cases to determine whether there is “probable cause” to believe that an individual has committed a crime and should be put on trial.

It’s difficult to read about Haiti without feeling heartbroken. The Caribbean country caught the world’s attention nearly three years ago when an earthquake killed thousands and left over a million Haitians homeless.

Haiti has suffered greatly from deforestation, with 98 percent of its original tree cover destroyed. Rife with mudslides, floods and soil erosion, the country is an environmental disaster in need of a hero. That’s where Chavannes Jean-Baptiste comes in.

It’s been a particularly bad academic year thus far in terms of sexual violence on and around campus. In the past month, three sexual assaults were reported to the UO Police Department alone, and sexual assault prevention advocates say that’s consistent with the “red zone,” the first six weeks of fall term when a high rate of sexual violence is reported. On Nov.

“We know beyond a shadow of a doubt humans have affected the composition of the atmosphere and almost beyond a shadow of a doubt that global warming is related to that,” says Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute (OCCRI). In this election season, climate change didn’t come up until after the presidential debates, but superstorm Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath meant the topic hit the headlines before the election was over.

Every four years around presidential election time, the Electoral College gets attention for a few weeks, then fades into the fog of obscurity for four more years. But who are Oregon’s seven electors, how did they become electors and what do they do?

President Obama’s victory this week does not automatically make him president for four years, but it kicks off a long and formal process that leads up to his inauguration at noon Jan. 20, 2013. Seven electors will (ideally) represent us and cast their votes for Obama and Biden in Salem Dec. 17.

That’s Cool New & Used is a new retail shop at 1000 Bertelsen Road, Suite 3, in Eugene. The locally owned and operated store offers antiques, gift items, video games, housewares, used furnishings and collectables. They also do repairs and refinishing. Call 343-3642 for hours or find the store on Facebook. A website in under construction.